Affine and projective planes (Q919610)

This is an interesting paper which studies the code of a finite projective plane. The technique is to study the hull, which is defined for any 2-design \(D=(P,B)\), where P is the set of points and B the set of blocks. Let I be an incidence matrix of D where the rows are indexed by the blocks and the columns by the points. The GF(p)-code of D is denoted \(C_ p(D)\) and is the subspace of \(GF(p)^ N\), \(N=| P|\), generated by the rows of I. If \(C_ p(D)^{\perp}\) is the orthogonal subspace, that is the dual code, then \(Hull_ p(D)=C_ p(D)\cap C_ p(D)^{\perp}\). Many results are obtained and will surely produce more. It is known that \(\dim C_ p(PG(2,p^ h))=\binom{p+1}{2}^ h+1\) and one of the aims of the project is to prove the conjecture that dim \(C_ p(D)\) is at least this number for any projective plane D of order \(p^ h\) with equality if and only if D is Desarguesian.